I just happened to stumble upon this car in the middle of winter 6 years ago. The car was mostly original, the original red interior was all apart and in need of help, and the electrical was messed up, but the car ran. The engine bay was so dirty that I could barely see the white paint, but the body was so solid, and the exterior of the car had been repainted not long ago. A long story short, it was a perfect base car.

The initial plan was to fix everything, convert to the black interior, re-do the whole engine bay, drivetrain, and suspension to build a reliable street car/ daily driver. Unlike my other Zs (which are G-nosed), I knew I wanted to keep this car short-nosed and non-flared, and furnish it with the classy, gold Enkei 92 mesh wheels.

The stock L24 + SU carbs ran relatively well, but that just didn’t do it for me. Within a few month, the car received the Stage-I engine + Solex + the ignition upgrade. This was okay fun and fuel efficient (26mpg/gallon). After performing some tests with this setup, it was time for an upgrade. As the inherent thirst for more power and instant response grew, the engine got upgraded to the Stage-III mere a year later. This car will continue to evolve, and it will most definitely receive further upgrade (STD engine, or SPL), but at the time of this writing (August 2015), it has the Stage-III engine. By the way, yes, it runs on pump gas.

The White Z is decent fast, super responsive, and it has good power. It is a lot of fun to drive, is a very well handling car, and is as reliable as can be. This car is very clean and presentable, yet it isn’t too overwhelmingly nice to be a garage queen…making this a perfect street machine.

The White Z has mainly been used as a Datsun Spirit shop R&D car, as well as a street car. Many of the proprietary products from DSI have been tested and verified on this White Z, before releasing to the market.

Can you tell us something special about this car: What kind of new products have lately been tested on, and what do we expect to see coming out from DSI in the near future?

Aside from constantly thinking about and developing better engine and performance products, we have been working on the ignition upgrade since last fall. As the performance level of the engine increased, the limitations of distributor/coil style ignition were becoming apparent. The direct fire ignition system was the obvious technology to investigate. A few companies make those direct ignition systems, but Electromotive’s 60-2 trigger wheel pattern is beyond doubt the best and most precise system out there (Don’t just take our word for it, ask any Porsche guys!). While at it, we were also working on a better harmonic damper upgrade. We have seen so many stock pulleys come apart, and we have always thought the stock Z pulley to be both inadequately built and too light relative to the performance level. Other aftermarket alternatives are fundamentally the same style as the OEM and are not much better. We chose to go with the best harmonic damper out there (ATI harmonic damper), which dramatically reduces crankshaft harmonics, dramatically extends engine life, and oh by the way, ATI damper makes adopting trigger wheel (for the direct ignition) real easy. So it is a win-win situation.

After switching to the Electromotive XDI2 direct fire ignition system, and even before pulling the car out of the shop, we immediately noticed the difference. A long story short, we were so impressed with the better idle, much improved throttle (bottom 5%, middle range and the upstairs), reliability & stability & efficiency, and the overall driving “feel” was quite dramatically improved. As if that’s not enough, XDI-2 allows a laptop computer to connect to it to fully map out the ignition event the way you like it. (We will publish a blog article on XDI soon). And now we are happy to announce that this kit is available to you.

In addition, we have several new engine internal items in the production phase. The new engine will have even more improved rod/stroke ratio, even lighter internals, and most likely coupled with our CNC STD head. Stay tuned for details.

We have also been working on ITB fuel injection system with stand alone ECU, that can potentially be a plug-n-play for our Engines. Stay tuned.

Aside from that, we will probably be using the White Z more in drag racing and track events to have some fun!

Can you tell us about the suspension & brakes, and how the car handles/drives?

The White Z has coilover suspension with infinitely adjustable shocks. The front has about -4 degrees of camber so this car handles extremely well. It really hugs the road and can do vey tight corners at a high rate of speed with ease. The big brakes, together with sticky Toyo RA1 tires, help stop the car. If anything, I would say the brakes are a little too strong for the weight of the car.

Also, as mentioned earlier, this car was built as a street car, so the ride had to be comfortable, yet at the same time, it was built race ready, so the car has a good balance of comfort and handling at a much higher performance/comfort level than those Eibach & KYB or Tokiko, for example.

Can DSI build my Z to be just like the White Z or better? Alternatively, can I buy this car?

Sure thing, we can build your Z just like the White Z or better. And sure, though we are not actively selling this car, we are open to entertain a serious offer.